


a passenger in the night

by remi_wolf



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Beholding Avatar Powers (The Magnus Archives), Confusion, Gen, Possession, Statement Addiction (The Magnus Archives), The Beholding Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), The Magnus Archives Season 3, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:54:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27039043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remi_wolf/pseuds/remi_wolf
Summary: Between the stress of trying to stop the Unknowing, trying to keep himself from apparently dying without statements, and keeping himself from angering his coworkers in the Archives, Jon isn't sleeping well. Maybe that's why he's sleepwalking. At least...he has to be sleepwalking, right? What else could be he doing? Why else would he be waking up in different places than he fell asleep in?Whumptober Day 15: Into the Unknown. Prompt: Possession.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23
Collections: Beguilements and Distractions, Remi's Whumptober Collection for 2020, Whumptober 2020





	a passenger in the night

The first time it happened, Jon wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. He figured he had walked in his sleep somehow, even despite the fact that he hadn’t ever done that before, but he didn’t know what else would have happened to cause it. He knew that he had been sleeping less and less since he had returned to working at the institute, but he had never done something like this before, even if he barely slept at all, and he knew that Georgie would have told him if he had. 

However, he didn’t know what else the answer was. He fell asleep in bed, safely in bed, and then he’d wake up, fully clothed and on the couch, aching as though he had walked all over town. Maybe he was sleepwalking. There wasn’t much of another answer, and so the next night, as he prepared for bed, he pulled the heaviest dresser he could in front of the door, locked the door, and then put a door in front of his own bedroom door as well.

Hopefully that would be enough to keep him safe in his room and getting some proper sleep, and hopefully he wouldn’t be able to do anything else. 

He closed his eyes, curled up in bed, safe and sound, and fell asleep. 

His hands ached. His feet ached as well, but his hands were the pressing concern as he slowly came to awareness. It felt as though his brain was in a fog, even if it was very slightly clearing, but he didn’t know why that would happen. Was it the middle of the night still? He had his glasses on his face, but his hands still ached, and he finally realized what he was looking at as he tried to pull the dresser out from in front of the door. His hands ached because they were gripping the dresser, unable to move it, and he took a shaking breath. 

Or he would, if he could control that at all. That somehow almost seemed to pull his thoughts from the fog, not that it helped him to regain control of his body. His lungs expanded of their own accord, slow and steady and calm as he finally got a proper grip on the dresser and pulled it away from the door. His feet moved without him telling them to, and if he could feel panic, he would, but even as his thoughts grew panicked and worried, the familiar rush of adrenaline didn’t follow. Without that...it was difficult to even think about whether he was panicking or not. 

“Jon, Jon, Jon, this really is ridiculous.” 

Jon’s thoughts stilled, trying to comprehend the way his mouth moved, even if the words weren’t the same as how he would say them. If anything, he’d almost say that it sounded like...like Elias, somehow, though he had no idea how that could be. Was this Elias? Had Elias somehow figured out how to control his body? That was impossible! 

“You really should learn the meaning of that word and how entirely useless it is for you. Nothing’s truly impossible in this dark world we live in.”

Jon tried to force himself to breathe, even as his hands unlocked the door and began walking out of his flat. For being a practical puppet on a string—and that thought uncomfortably brought up the threats that Nikola had given to him not too long ago—the movements were smooth and easy, as natural as if he himself was walking, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t walking, and he wasn’t moving his body as Elias popped up his collar against the chill of the late-night air, and Jon wished he could at least hyperventilate as he tried to figure out how to regain control of his limbs, even a finger or two. 

Why had Elias decided to do this? What was he planning? Wasn’t this something like...something like what the Web would do? Wasn’t this sort of thing within the control of the Web, that liked to manipulate and puppet people just as much or more than the Stranger and its strange circuses?

“You really need to learn to stop thinking so small. Our patron allows me to feed in a variety of ways.”

Jon tried not to shiver at the way it felt to have Elias speak, to have his tongue shift and move without him realizing it or asking it to move, and he knew that his thoughts were going into a strange and dark place in the back of his head, but he hoped that Elias wouldn’t be able to—

“Of course I know what you’re thinking. I can See everything you’re thinking, Jon. Perhaps those thoughts would be best fulfilled by Annabelle, but for now, you’re my puppet, rather than hers.”

Jon wanted to sob as Elias continued walking, and he couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t even look somewhere other than where Elias was directing him, and even the fact that Elias was casually whistling made it seem even worse. What right did Elias have to have such a causal use of his body? He didn’t like it, and he kept trying to tell his body to stop moving, to turn around, anything, especially as he could feel a strange sort of inevitability that he was walking towards. That Elias was walking his body towards. 

“You can feel that, can’t you?”

Jon almost managed a sob in his thoughts, even if he wasn’t sure how that would work at all. What was he being forced to do? What was at the end of this path that Elias was forcing him on? Elias didn’t seem to care, instead finally turning to walk down a path to the nearby park, finding a person sitting underneath a lamp on a bench. Had Elias known that they were here? Of course he did, he had to, but why was he here?

“Hello, ma’am. I’m sorry to interrupt you.”

Jon would have jumped if he had control of his body, feeling a jolt of alertness as he felt his tongue make the words and saw as a hand extended towards the woman shortly after closing the distance between the two of them. At least the woman looked just as shocked and scared as Jon felt, even as she stood up and started taking a few steps away from him. 

“It’s...I’m just on my way home. I’m sorry—”

“Can you ask me to join you?”

Jon wished he could choke on his own tongue, able to feel the way the Beholding coated it with the compulsion to answer a question, and he knew that the woman wouldn’t be able to say no to that, or even not answer it. 

“I...yes, I can.” The woman looked confused, shaking her head as she tried to clear her head from the compulsion, and Jon tried to tell her to stop, to run away, tried to tell Elias to stop, but Elias simply pulled her hand close and sat her down next to him on the bench. 

“Do you have a story to tell me?”

Jon felt as though he was going to be sick, if only he could be sick. He didn’t want to pull these stories from people. He didn’t know what would happen, and he didn’t know what Elias was doing, but he could almost feel some sort of eagerness and glee as he sat there next to her. 

“I...I do. But I don’t want to tell you the story. But...but I have a story to tell you.” The woman still looked terrified, as trapped as Jon felt, even as Jon felt a grin spread across his face. 

“Statement of Eliza Baker, taken live from subject. Statement begins.”

Jon screamed in his head, watching and despising how satisfying this statement was, how it eased the edges of the hunger and hurt and everything awful that he recognized from not having a statement for a while. It felt so good, but he didn’t want this, and he didn’t want to hurt her, but Elias kept him there, watching as she spilled the story and her secrets, and Elias kept asking questions, kept prying and pulling her apart until she was a shivering mess, eyes wide with terror as she sat, pinned on the bench, and Elias finally stood up as the morning dawn’s light began to crest over the buildings. 

“Thank you. That was delicious.”

Elias grinned, finally turning and leaving the woman alone behind, walking as though nothing was the matter, even as he walked Jon home and laid him down on the couch. 

Just the same as every other night.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully you liked this weird fic. Honestly....I don't know about it? Writing's been weird the past few days, but yeah! Comments always welcome. Hopefully you enjoyed this! Thank you!


End file.
